The Hunter and the Ouran Hosts
by DarkBeta
Summary: AU. In a school where lineage and money matter most, blood and power are linked for a reason; a price some families are willing to pay.
1. Chapter 1

(I did not create and do not own Ouran High School Host Club. I am not a manga-ka. No-one would want me to be a manga-ka. Everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds.)

"No. Absolutely not. My good, sweet, innocent daughter going to a hellhole like Ouran High School . . . ?"

"I toured the campus. It's very nice," Haruhi offered, as a sop to justice.

She didn't expect her father to notice. He didn't.

". . . packed to the rafters with boys of demonic charm who'll pursue my dear Haruhi and steal her heart. They'll devour you like a petit four! How will I ever tell Kotoko what happened, when she asks why I didn't care for our darling daughter?"

"I already sent in the transfer form."

Only Ouran High School had the libraries and teachers for what she needed to learn. Haruhi knew there was some risk. The rich bastards could turn on an outsider for no reason at all, and her family was more than enough excuse. She just had to keep a low profile and study hard.

The first week went well. The only times anyone noticed her were to sniff or look affronted, until the afternoon every library and study room turned out to be noisy, busy and crowded. Moving farther and higher into the building, she spotted the Fourth Music Room on a floor map. It was off on a top floor by itself. Somehow she knew it would be quiet, and solitary, and she needed to be there.

She would have recognized a clumsy summoning, but it was expertly cast. The glamour ended as she crossed the room's lintel. Haruhi felt the energies of a pocket-realm around her, but the heavy silent doors swung closed on their own. When she threw herself back she fell against them.

She knew what she'd see when she raised her eyes. She just didn't know what forms they'd take.

The room was incongruously bright. Linen cloths covered dainty tables, set among chintz upholstered seats. On a sideboard china and silver gleamed. The array of six handsome (too handsome, her instincts warned) human boys was worse than the monsters she expected. It left her imagination free to embroider their true forms.

The blond seated at their center was dressed as a Goblin King from some fantasy movie, with irridescent eye shadow and white fur and crystals and sequins. He was the one who'd set the spell. From halfway across the room Haruhi felt powers of attraction and seduction roiling around him. She took several steps away from the door, past a vase on a narrow stand, and she stopped herself.

The dark boy standing behind the king had found the only shadows in the sunny room. Glasses hid his eyes as perfectly as a mask. His powers were colder, command and coercion and probably truth-telling as well. A skull headed silver pike rested against his shoulder and black bat-wings arched behind him, so he looked like a messenger of death.

On the blond's other side was an even taller boy, dark and somber. A wide-bladed sword hung at his side and his face was painted like a temple guardian. Pointed ears and an arrow-tipped tail turned the blond child on his shoulder into an imp. Haruhi tried to keep from shaking. She was doomed. Only the greatest powers manifested as small and cute.

"That's no hunter. What's a boy doing here?"

"I bet our king messed up. Again."

The last two boys, with little red horns and black pitchforks, sat back to back in perfect symmetry. Haruhi recognized them. The Hitachiin twins were in several of her classes. She'd really thought they were human. Here and now the swirl of chaos around them was obvious.

"Tell them it's not my fault, Mother," the tall blond whined.

"Men can be profitable customers also," the dark boy said. "Fujioka Haruhi . . . ."

Suddenly the blond was right in front of her.

"Welcome to the Ouran High School Host Club, where young women with too much time on their hands can spend pleasant hours away from the mundane world. Or boys too, of course. What type does a commoner like? Do you want the company of our little devils, Hikaru and Kaoru?"

The twins clasped hands and grinned at her. Other Ouran students might not have seen the edge of mocking cruelty. Haruhi stepped carefully backward.

". . . scholarship student, poor as dirt . . . ." the dark boy droned.

". . . Or Morinozuka Takashi, the strong and silent type, or the little boy type Haninozuka Mitsukuni . . . ."

"I like to eat cake! Do you want to come and have some cake with me?"

The boy (who was not, of course, as young as he looked) held out a plate of cake decorated with marzipan apples. The temple guardian took a step forward and bowed to let the child slide off his shoulder. Haruhi backed up again.

Was there a chance of escape? Her disguise of not-worth-looking-at seemed to have held. The boy in the shadows slid his glasses up his nose, and the light flashed off them.

". . . motherless, without connection to any of the powerful families . . . ."

". . . or shadow type Ootori Kyouya, or perhaps . . . ." The blond stepped too close to her again. ". . . enchanting type Suou Tamaki! Am I your type, Fujioka Haruhi?"

"I'm trying to find a place to study. I just want out of here!"

A quick finger-rune behind her back checked for wards on the door. She didn't feel them. She might be able to get back out. Even if the hosts followed her back to the human realm, she'd have more power to defend herself.

The vase rocked as she backed past it. Haruhi steadied it with one hand . . . .

Life-force screamed and mourned, stored like scraps in a refrigerator to be devoured later. This wasn't a vase, or not just a vase. The girls who came to the Host Club for tea and cake . . . were not the only ones feeding.

Ouran's students hadn't gone out of their way to make a scholarship student welcome. Haruhi didn't expect it. She dodged their malice or boredom, mostly, and felt amused contempt for how they wasted their advantages. She couldn't leave them to sicken and die though.

Instead of one step back through the door Haruhi went sideways, knocking the vase from its pedestal. Bright fragments fountained out of it. She stepped smoothly back after that, but the door was shut. The shock of its wards was like lightning. (She had reason to fear thunderstorms.) Haruhi screamed and fell forward.

". . . last daughter of the Fujioka line of demon hunters," Ootori finished.

The fountain winked out spark by spark. The last of the light glinted from Ootori's glasses, showing who set traps within a trap. Haruhi crouched in the dark. Two voices spoke together, changing from human to something other, and the human laughter was worse than the other.

"She's a girl after all . . . plain and poor and badly dressed. Silly demon hunter . . . can't hunt us now. Can't kill us . . . can't get away. You're our toy now . . . fun to hunt . . . and kill . . . and eat. You shouldn't have come to the Host Club . . . shouldn't have come to Ouran. Shouldn't have been born . . . since you're going to die . . . die . . . die."

Haruhi stood, pulling a dagger from the waist sheath hidden by her heavy sweater. The blade shone. As she called up power her short hair shifted and spread, coiling across her shoulders and down her back. She expected claws from the dark, but the hosts gave her time to summon a ring of protection.

One twin still looked human, but the same face grinned from something mantis-like behind him. Morinozuka swelled twenty feet high, with a raised sword like a roof-beam. Haninozuka's face went sharp and pointed, and tails like a fox lashed behind it. Suou's perfect features stretched to monstrosity as a predator's jaw thrust forward and his eyes turned gold.

"Perhaps you know the saying, if you don't have cash pay with your carcass?"

The way back was closed, unless the hosts chose to open it. She might take down one demon or even two, but not six. Behind the hosts a table cloth had slipped, that covered not a table but a block of stained stone. And Haruhi heard the rustle of tentacles.

She had no time for grief or regret. Her hands, one armed and the other open, moved from gesture to gesture. The binding rose like ribbons about her. The ring of protection flickered, forms she didn't care to watch pressing against it. She pushed up a sleeve of her sweater and sliced across the flesh.

The blade flushed red, and then it was too heavy to hold. She let it fall. The ring of protection vanished like a bubble.

"Mother, your daughter is coming to see you," Haruhi said in the dark, and then she let herself fall also.

(Not the end of the story, I promise!)


	2. Chapter 2

(Watch out. Halloween gore ahead! Not my characters, and i bet they don't like where i've put them. I'm expecting a summons from Ootori . . . .)

Light like corpse-candles bobbed over her body and the spreading pool of blood. Sudden as illusion Morinozuka, looking human again, knelt beside her.

"Not dead. Yet," he reported.

His hand went into the blood as if it were a running stream, and he lifted a palm-full and drank. He shook off the rest and wiped his hand on her sweater. Then he scooped more and raised the bowl of his cupped hands toward his shoulder.

A yellow fox crouched where nothing was before. It leaned to drink from Morinozuka's hands, and then its eyes went wide and it bristled all over and disappeared in a puff of smoke. When the smoke drifted away the little blond boy sat on Morinozuka's shoulder again.

"Not sweet, not sweet at all," Haninozuka complained. "Like whiskey or fire, not a bit like cake."

"Our toy! Ours!"

The body was graceless, ragged, and shorn. Haruhi's long hair had wisped away with her power. The twins lunged forward on either side. Both looked like human boys again, but they moved on all fours and snarled at Morinozuka until he stepped back into the dark. The one on Haruhi's left licked at the floor.

"We swore to share everything, Kaoru, but how can I ask you to share such a cursed drink?" he asked with stained lips.

"If it was the draft of Hell, Hikaru, I'd drink it from your mouth!"

"Oh, Kaoru!"

"Oh, Hikaru!"

They clung together across the body.

"Little devils! Leave that poor ignorant commoner to die in peace!"

"Yes, King Idiot. Of course, King Idiot!"

When the twins sprang apart, both mouths were stained. They flickered back into the dark, and Suou knelt by Haruhi's side. He lifted her hand, staring tenderly into her blind eyes.

"You must have known this would be your end, when you fought those greater than you," he sighed. "How bitter your life has been, commoner demon hunter. But fear not! You will live again, part of something greater than you've ever known!"

He kissed her hand, and dotted quick chaste pecks up her arm to the seeping wound, where his lips stayed longer. He laid the arm down gently. Ootori stepped out of the dark, pushing his glasses up.

"Demon hunters don't usually fall so easily."

"Hear that, my brothers? Even the Shadow King acknowledges our remarkable victory. Three cheers for the Host Club. Three cheers for moi!"

Morinozuka remained unheard but the twins and Haninozuka happily joined his cheer. Ootori huffed in irritation. He dragged Haruhi up by her arm, drank briefly, and let her fall in an ungainly sprawl.

A globe of light on a silver stalk rose from her chest. Faint segments appeared, and it opened like a five-petaled flower. For an instant it was still and perfect.

And then the petals stretched and writhed, dragged out toward the darkness, and shadows pulsed from their center.

"Our toy. Ours!" the twins chortled, and Haninozuka laughed, "So sweet!"

"I THINK NOT!"

The hosts froze. Everything was silent. The petals snapped back to their flower again, and the flower closed into a bud, though five irridescent cords fed into it. Haruhi's body shifted and slowly rose. The glowing globe hung just by her heart.

A woman with dark hair and a pale face materialized behind the body. Her arms held it in midair. The woman smiled down tenderly, and then a skull's grin replaced her face. Haruhi opened her eyes and smiled up at it.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU, DEAR?"

"Not t'come home early. Sorry 'bout this. Daddy's going to cry."

One who is terrible to all looked about the darkened realm. Suou shook almost too hard to stand, but he reached a hand out imploringly. Ootori stepped back into shadow. Light glanced off his glasses like blind eyes staring. The twins tangled together, grappling like wrestlers for a closer, tighter hold. Haninozuka ducked his head against Morinozuka's chest. The taller host stood braced for a storm, but sweat beaded on his forehead.

Haruhi stood again, only a little unsteady. A pale face misted back across the skull. The woman held Haruhi's hands. They looked like an older sister and a younger, but one face was the color of flesh and the other of bone. The soul globe bobbed between them.

"I couldn't get back, so I made sure the hosts couldn't go back without me. Rich bastards didn't think twice about a free meal. Guess they will now. Can you tell Dad . . . tell him you saw me?"

Moving Haruhi's hands with her own, the woman pushed at the globe. It drifted closer to Haruhi, and faded, and left the five pale threads behind.

"I'LL TELL HIM WHEN YOU'LL BE LATE," she said and vanished.

"Tell him there's a coupon for dried mackeral at half price!" Haruhi called, but Death was as absent as an incarnation of mortality could be.

"You seem to think you've accomplished something," Ootori said in the dark.

Haruhi knelt for the stained blade. Long hair swirled around her again. She took off her glasses.

"He always gets the serving-size packets, and they're so much more expensive."

Suou glided toward her, looking not so much human as angelic, gilded with glory.

"Why, Fujioka-san, you're beautiful. Why did you hide it? Little common hunter, come join us. Beauty, power, strength, centuries of life . . . . What commoner doesn't long for them?"

He reached out, his gesture graceful as a geisha's.

The wards Haruhi had drawn around her flashed irridescence. The shock threw Suou across the room and stripped the glamour from his human form. He was one of the living dead. His eyes had fallen in and his skin was grey and mottled with fungus.

"Don't look . . . don't look . . . ." he whimpered, and drew shadow around him instead of light.

"Damn you! You scared Hikaru. I'll take you apart for it!" one of the twins howled.

It wasn't possible to know which one spoke. Both lunged at her. They clung to her like lovers, but they had sharp, sharp teeth. She stood impassive as the Hitachiins writhed about her, and was not touched.

"Blood binding," said a voice from the dark. "Blood willingly given, and willingly taken. You are reckless, Fujioka. It is too dark a skill to be taught to hunters in this enlightened age. You must have found an old scroll at your father's shrine."

Ootori stepped in front of her, and the twins receded.

"We can't leave this pocket-realm without you. Yet binding demons to you means you've bound yourself to demons. I can make you regret our company."

Her wards didn't even flicker. His power came through them, and was ropes around her. He reached around her in something not much like a lover's embrace, and pulled her head back with a fist in her hair. Not ropes but tentacles coiled around her legs and arms, bending her back like a sacrifice on a stone.

Across his shoulder Haruhi saw Morinozuki turn away, but the twins were giggling.

"I can hurt you. I can drive you mad. Why aren't you afraid?"

"If you knew about the binding . . . why did you drink?"


	3. Chapter 3

(Not so much gore, but maybe even more disturbing than last chapter. Also, I've introduced an irrelevant McGuffin and abandoned pretty much any reference to canon. Except the teddy bear.)

Still bent by demonic strength, Haruhi waited. She might not understand why, but she knew he'd release her.

"We are all enemies here. At least, we were supposed to be."

Ootori stepped back. Haruhi felt no safer, but she fed more will into the wards that had failed her, and held the spell-dagger out to block attacks.

They would strike at her again, one or another or all at once. Even in the human world she could not expect to fight six demons and win. Here the realm itself dragged at her. If she fought hard enough, for long enough, they'd have to kill her.

If not, they had already begun to feed. The scraps left once they finished would not be whole or sane enough to recognize Death when she came.

The demons would turn on each other then, like crabs in a bowl, feeding on the weakest until only the strongest was left. That one would still be trapped, eternally alone. In a human sense demons – were – madness, but Haruhi had never heard if they could – go – mad. Perhaps that one would find the answer.

Demon hunters never reached old age. If she kept six demons from troubling mankind, well, past hunters had chosen to die for smaller gains.

Ootori pushed his glasses up to hide his eyes.

"I suggest a challenge, human. You will face us, one demon at a time. If you survive we will consider opening the gate for you. And you, will consider releasing us."

"Consider," Haruhi said flatly.

"Hunter, do you expect a better offer?"

Golden armor stepped rattling in front of him.

"Wonderful! I, Suou Tamaki, the King of the Host Club, will face you, little human commoner, and fight for honor and survival like samurai jousting on the field of battle. En garde!"

Ootori smirked.

"A gift," he said, and tossed something past Suoh. Haruhi caught her own glasses out of the air, and slapped at her empty pocket, and glared at the shadowed host.

Then they were somewhere else. Wood creaked under her feet, the floor to some kind of indoor game court. Beyond wooden partitions onlookers cheered. Suou walked toward her, a white sweater tied about his shoulders, carrying two rackets and tossing a ball. He made a two-fingered wave at his audience. Most of them were female. Several fainted.

"Tennis, anyone?"

"You have got to be kidding."

He had the kind of facade she'd always despised, inbred and fragile as a porcelain greyhound. His eyes looked like sapphires from the sort of jeweler with no price tags and several security guards. His gold hair looked like, well, hair, but hair washed in stuff that cost more than New Year's saki and tended with the care of prize-winning orchids. Attraction pulled at her like a gravitational field.

Attraction wasn't all she felt. Either the room was remarkably drafty, or . . . . Haruhi looked down. Yes, she was wearing a tennis dress. A gleaming white tennis dress with a very short skirt.

Suou stepped back. At least he was able to recognize killing intent. Good. She didn't want to feel guilty over killing the incompetent.

A gesture returned her own clothes and banished the other (with no unclothed interlude, unlike some other magic-users). With the use of power her hair streamed like a banner again. The demon host eyed it besottedly.

"Such tresses are the truest ornament of a maiden's pure form . . . ."

Glass lenses, first cousin to the soul-reflecting mirror, could be remarkably effective against enchantment. That was the reason Haruhi put her glasses on. The small hope that they'd discourage Suou was irrelevant.

When the image of Suou began to blur and pulse, her first suspicion was blindness. She should have remembered Ootori had called the glasses a gift. When a demon offered presents, the wisest course was to run screaming.

The Suoh blob tore into two, spun wildly, and superimposed one blob on the other. The tennis court and the audience faded into blankness. Haruhi reached to tear the glasses off and shatter them.

And she walked into a dark echoing room. The only light came from a guttering fire, on a hearth the size of her bedroom. Nearby a woman sobbed hopelessly, draped across some strange European furnishing. Haruhi felt a moment's dim astonishment at recognizing a chaise longe.

"Maman, don't cry any more. You will have doctors now, and get well, and be happy again . . . ."

The woman lifted her head. She had pale skin, and golden hair, and blue eyes so perfect crying couldn't spoil them. She looked familiar. Her dress was gleaming and sleek, and something in the way she lay said a man had bought it for her.

"No, no; never! Not without my darling, my little boy. I will tell them to go away. We don't need their dirty money, or their threats!"

The walls were decorated with mirrored panels. Beyond the chaise longe Haruhi could see herself; no, she could see the person speaking. She recognized his face, though he was younger here. She recognized the way he glanced at his own reflection, tweaking his expression to better charm his mother.

". . . and I will make friends and go to school and be happy too, because I know you are happy. You see, we must both promise to be happy. Whenever we think of each other we will be happy, because the other person is truly, truly happy too!"

The woman pulled her son (and Haruhi) close, and kissed his forehead and his cheek, and hugged him the way a weeping child might clutch an oversized toy.

"Oh, ugh," Haruhi thought, and, "She's not my mother!"

She backed deeper into the shadows at the edge of a torch-lit garden. Moonlight and starlight made a stretch of raked white sand gleam like snow. In the center of it a young boy knelt on a scarlet pillow. He wore embroidered silk robes and clutched a gilt fan. If not for his blond hair, and the teddy bear tucked under his elbow, he could have been an elaborate antique doll.

She must have moved or made a sound when she recognized him. Suou stared in her direction. Haruhi refused to lurk by the wall like a thief. She paced forward.

"Oh, you're beautiful! I'm glad. I like beautiful things, and so does Maman. Come here."

She would never understand why she obeyed. He stroked her coarse gold hair.

"It's so shiny. And your fur is like velvet. You're wonderful."

Haruhi backed away. The boy looked at her with that brilliant smile.

"Are you going to kill me now?"

Of course she was. She was a Hunter. He was a demon. Wasn't he?

"Yes."

"Don't be unhappy. I want this, you know. I have to, for Maman."

One blow was all she'd need, for so small a human (human?) thing. Her claws lashed down. (Her claws?) Perhaps it was the inner question that let her miss. The boy was thrown sideways, with robes shredded and lines of blood starting across his chest, but he wasn't even badly hurt. His lips moved.

"I want to do this. I do. For Maman."

He still smiled. He was crying though. She licked his face, and tasted salt tears with the blood, before she raised a great paw again . . . .

"No!"

Haruhi fell backwards. She finished pulling off the glasses and threw them away. Suou blinked at her.

"Oh, have you been overwhelmed by soul-destroying demonic terror and sent to the gibbering edge of insanity already? Because I haven't even called the demon yet."


	4. Chapter 4

(A longer chapter, and scads of exposition. I hope it's worth reading anyhow.)

The host took a step toward her and hunched forward, his jaw thrusting out. Haruhi stood quickly. At the next step his fine gold hair spread across his shoulders and chest in a gleaming mane, and his face began to be a beast's. At the next step long fingered hands clenched into paws and clothes tore from a body greater and stronger than human. The step after that he fell to all fours, and then she had no time to count.

The demon beast looked something between a wolf and a lion, with a long-fanged muzzle and a mane that shielded its throat and chest. Its first lunge sent Haruhi skidding back. Her shield blocked the reaching jaws. She stayed on her feet.

Chanting, she drew a sign on the dagger's blade and gestured. White javelins shot out as the beast lunged again. It eeled between the first dozen, until a paw skidded on a banana peel and it stumbled. The spell caught up to it. For a moment it was pinned, a porcupine of spears. It howled and shook itself. The fragile spells shattered.

For the third time it leapt at her. Haruhi scratched one more rune on the floor and stabbed downward. Light anchored by five runes writhed and crackled. With a moment's warning the demon might have broken the crude barrier, but it was already in mid-air. The pentacle rose to meet it.

Haruhi gestured. The trap-sign flung itself and its burden at the nearest wall. Dust billowed from the impact. She leaned forward, her hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath.

The dust began to settle. On the wall a huge crater showed where the demon beast had struck. A far smaller figure dropped bonelessly out of it, down to the rubble.

She trudged toward him. Suou pulled a remnant of white sweater across himself, and blushed a fervid pink down his arms and chest.

"I am the King of the Host Club. This is entirely unsuitable! Forgive me . . . ." He twinkled at her. ". . . for filling your dreams with unattainable perfection."

Even when he sat on the ground, Haruhi was not much taller. Her left hand tangled in his hair. The right dangled a dagger. He swallowed.

"Ah, that's a symbolic weapon, right? You couldn't really use it for, eh-heh, anything?"

"Why carry a blade that doesn't cut?"

"How wonderfully utilitarian! Is it one of the commoner products sold on late-night television – it slices, it dices, it cuts, it curses -- since commoners can't afford more than one knife in a household?"

This would be easy, if he was still in demonic form. Contact with her wards should have stripped away illusion, revealing a soul trapped in a demon-animated corpse. Killing a peer and a classmate was harder. Worse, her memory kept trying to superimpose a child the demon had destroyed.

Enchantment and attraction were the demon's strengths. Of course he tried to shape himself into something she couldn't destroy. His weapons worked best when the victim was unaware, but they were still working.

"It will only hurt for a moment."

He reached up, running a hand through the hair across her shoulders. (He had stroked the demon's mane, just before it struck.)

"You should keep your hair long. You are so beautiful."

Haruhi stepped backward, releasing him.

"There was blood on the teddy bear, right?"

"What?"

"There's always blood on a toy or a doll. Where is the garden of white sand?"

"At Grand-mere's house. Over the river and through the wood . . . but the wolf was waiting in her bed." He went on smiling at her, blithely and charmingly. "Poor teddy got red, but the maid washed him and nobody knew. At dawn they spread new sand, all clean, all white."

He sounded neither more nor less sane when he added, "I'm the king. I'm responsible. Once you kill me, let the others go."

Haruhi realized he was kneeling in the same pose as the boy in a midnight garden. He curled forward. With a shiver he was the lion-wolf again, no longer a striding monster but dwarfed to little more than knee-height.

She brought the dagger forward. Whimpering, the demon wriggled forward on its belly. She kept her guard up. The demon rolled onto its back, its white paws folded together, and looked up with a familiar coyness. Haruhi sighed. She sheathed the knife.

"This has not been a good day."

She sat on a block of stone blasted out of the wall. Her glasses had fallen nearby. She picked them up. This time she could trace out Ootori's spell on them, like a static charge. He hadn't had time for anything complex, just truth-telling, with a bitter edge. They would always show an inconvenient truth.

The demon rolled upright again. It spoke with Suou's voice.

"The cub dies. My power can't save him. Yours can."

Haruhi was tired. Her situation was too grim for curiousity, and whatever experience she gained would die with her. And yet . . . .

There were laws, and there were Laws. Usually the only rules demon hunters needed or followed were, find the demon, hunt the demon, kill or be killed (with possibly a sub-clause concerning damage to bystanders). Haruhi's whole intent on entering Ouran had been to discover more.

Why did tentacle monsters get their power the way they did, and why did fanged monsters need pain and blood? Why were demon hunters usually called in their late teens? (It probably had something to do with the tentacle monsters.) How did the great families control the demons they bound? (Yes, there was the occasional massacre, downplayed in the news, and a trickle of disappearances among the unaffiliated. Apparently these were acceptable losses.)

Her mother asked those questions, after she was unexpectedly called to hunt. Kotoko had lived two years longer, half the time in the hospital. That was about average for a hunter, and remarkable for one called late and unskilled. Even her death came as a private bargain, a way to give some protection to the family she left behind. No demon had that victory.

In her mother's honor, Haruhi wanted answers. She didn't let her interest show. Her expression didn't change and her voice was flat, when she answered the demon.

"What do you care? With or without his soul, you have your anchor on Earth. You don't have to put up with Suou being annoying."

The demon snapped at its haunch like a dog with a flea. Haruhi doubted any flea would bite a demon. It was playing for time.

"The cub limits me. His kin would command me!"

It snarled, swelling huger than an ox. Haruhi drew her feet under her for a quick lunge or rolling dodge. It dwindled to a supplicant pup again.

"They didn't leash what they didn't value. He is free."

The woman the glasses showed her could be an outside wife, kept away from the main house. Had no-one set spells of protection and control on her son? Magic kept the children of great families equally safe from rebellion and possession, from independent thought and demonic attack. To sacrifice one was to lose the other. What pampered child would risk that?

If the demon spoke truth (and that was the most dangerous assumption any demon hunter could make) it was bound only by Suou's will for as long as its host remained separate from it. Only when Suou was entirely absorbed would the demon itself fall into the family's control.

The demon expected power in return for power. Haruhi was too used to bargaining at the vegetable stalls to show ignorance, not when she could get knowledge a different way. Untangling the blood bonds anchored at her core, she traced a golden one to the lion-wolf.

Floating within its true huge manifestation was a child's corpse withered to bone and skin, and a living soul bound inside that. She felt a vibration like a guitar string near her heart. A drop of light seeped along the bond, passing through the demon to its anchor. The child became Tamaki.

He was curled around a teddy bear. He wore his school uniform, without the jacket. For the first time since she walked into the fourth music room, Haruhi saw his face clean of fervor or terror.

A foggy ball split from the demon's form and traveled back along the bond. She could have warded against it. Watching for some attack or subversion, Haruhi let it reach her. She was trapped anyhow. She had time for experiments.

It diffused almost tracelessly. Her bruises stopped aching. She felt as strong as if she'd never fought. Demonic power couldn't heal, but it could support the tissues and replace their function until they healed on their own.

She hadn't forgotten that she still had five more demons to fight.

"Power for power," Haruhi agreed. "You're not allowed to kill humans . . . ."

"The cub won't let me!" the demon yipped.

". . . or hurt them except to protect your host or others we agree upon . . . ."

"The cub won't let me," it whined.

". . . and you won't reveal yourself to other humans."

"Agreed. Hunter, you'll support the cub and you won't try to destroy me . . . ."

". . . unless you threaten those I ward."

". . . and you will protect the life the cub needs."

"Agreed."

The demon lifted one slim white paw, and Haruhi shook it.

(I haven't risked much Japanese, but i did throw in a couple of French words for Tamaki. Since i'm unfortunately monolingual, i'm hoping someone will trouble to tell me if i did it ridiculously wrong, like '_Maman_' in the wrong gender, or the nominitive, or whatever.)


	5. Chapter 5

(Yes, Suou's demon form is . . . a giant collie. Ah, you do know i don't own Ouran High School Host club, don't you? Because if you don't, can i interest you in a national monument at a low, low, takeaway price?)

Suou Tamaki returned to human form wearing a white-gloved Ruritanian uniform trimmed in red and gold, and a huffy expression. The ruined tennis court faded to Music Room Four.

"You told Antoinette I'm annoying!"

"You are. Who is Antoinette?"

"Mother, our sweet little girl is being disrespectful of her elders!"

"Wait. You named the demon?" Haruhi blinked. "You named the demon Antoinette?"

Ootori scribbled in a black notebook.

"Need I ask who won?"

"King Idiot, we were rooting for you," the twins chorused. "Not!"

Suou dropped to his knees in an attitude between supplication and adoration.

"I was defeated by a pretty warrior for love and beauty!"

Haruhi felt the unaccustomed draft with dreadful recognition. She looked down. The miniskirt this time was an insipid white and pink, with streamers and far too many bows. When she drew her blade it had sprouted roses and hearts and fuschia jewels.

"I am NOT a Magical Girl!"

She pinched the golden string at the same time as she raised a ward. Her grungey sweater and pants, with all their underpinnings, rematerialized. Suoh flew back several meters and landed in a huddle, his skin beginning to grey and wither. The flow of demonic strength ended. Haruhi barely managed not to stagger.

"Absolutely the wrong colors, King Idiot," one twin announced.

". . . and too, too last decade."

"Don't worry, Fujioka-kun. We'll put together something in blue or green . . . ."

"For you to be buried in . . . ."

". . . if anything is left to bury."

That twin licked his lips. Ootori snapped his book shut.

"There is no profit in wasted time. Begin the next bout."

"Hey, wait . . . !"

Between one syllable and the next Haruhi found herself in something like a jungle, filled with leaves that were not merely green, and flowers in rancid chemical hues. A bunch of slender stalks trembled near her. A wormlike head with compound eyes the size of dinner plates burst out of the ground under them. What had looked like grasses were its feelers. The eyes glittered, and then swarmed away, each facet a shining beetle's wing. The head split lengthwise. Shaggy leaves sprouted from it, and reached for her with thorn-covered palms.

She dodged, dropped to the ground to avoid saplings that lunged at her like spears, rolled through a rain of acid from golden flowers, and scrambled up again. Everywhere mad continuous change confused her eye and fractured her attention. This was chaos. The host of a chaos demon went mad long before he was consumed.

"You're boring."

A praying mantis tall as a giraffe struck down at her. The shield she flung up stopped it, barely. She was tired, tired and far from home.

"A toy that's no fun is thrown away."

One of the twins stood where the mantis had been. A reflection moved on his eyes. Haruhi dodged, as a serrated claw smashed down from behind her.

"Let's play a game, the which-one-is-Hikaru game," the demon said through clacking mouthparts. "I'm Hikaru."

As he spoke, he dwindled to a red-headed boy.

"No, I'm Hikaru!" a monster called from where the other boy had been.

One demon. Ootori had clearly said she'd face one demon at a time. The other had to be illusion. She spun around, her hands and dagger moving in patterns she practiced daily. Her spell, drawn to the demon's power, would fix it in place. A stronger demon might shake it off, but the mantis wasn't that strong yet.

The spell struck as it dwindled to human form again, and slid off. Haruhi stared in disbelief. Something behind her struck again.

She had to wake up, had to move. Death was waiting, but she couldn't go home yet. Haruhi forced her eyes open. The view didn't change much. Chaos looked a lot like a concussion.

She hung in a chitinous embrace. Fanged palps were closed like pincers on her face. Blood trickled from where their points cut into her skin. Directly in front of her, far too close, a twin's face leered at her between grinding mouthparts.

"You should be dead, but we like to play with our food."

"Have you figured out which one is Hikaru yet?"

She felt the breath of his words on her neck, as human arms held her in far too intimate an embrace. She was weak. She was going to die here.

Power beaded along a yellow cord, offering itself. She pushed temptation away.

"The demon moves between you. Hikaru is the host, and Kaoru is human. You change names whenever it moves."

Arms and mouthparts froze. Haruhi moved her hands from sign to sign.

"You . . . you're wrong. I'm Kaoru!" the demon said.

"I'm Hikaru!" piped the voice behind her.

"You know that's not true," she chided, and struck.

The explosion toppled the demon back, ripped Haruhi from its jaws, and sent her tumbling in the other direction. Blood arced as she flew, from her gashed sides and lacerated face.

She fell hard against a tree. It leaned over and tried to eat her. She brought a ward up, strong enough for mindless malice. A twin reached through it.

"You hurt him. I'll kill you."

She wanted to return the sentiment, but hunters didn't kill humans. (They might not concern themselves with collateral damage, but hunters themselves didn't murder.) She slapped a ward on him instead.

Cutting off demonic influences left him dazed for a moment. She only needed a moment. The brief fight had trampled out a clearing in the jungle. Her binding shot across it. The mantis, just beginning to scrabble upright, dwindled into the other twin.

She sheathed her knife and stumbled across the clearing, swaying on her feet. He looked oddly calm.

"He's human. You'll take him back with you, won't you?"

"I think I would have liked you, when you were human."

The human twin scrambled past her. He knelt beside his brother and put his arms around him.

"Go away! Leave us here, in our own private world. All we need are each other."

"You'll die. Humans can't survive in chaos."

"I don't care! I was the one they chose for the demon. Kaoru said he was me, and went in my place."

He touched the demon's cheek with terrible tenderness, and rested his head on his twin's shoulder.

They were still sane. Well, sane enough to be human, anyhow. The host had his brother to model himself on, a familiar mould whenever the demon changed hosts.

She couldn't release the demon. She couldn't bargain with it, the way she had with (Haruhi sighed, just thinking the name) Antoinette. A chaos demon wasn't sentient enough to recognize or keep an agreement. Her will touched a copper-colored cord that split to two tendrils at the end. Even at full strength she couldn't have bound and held it.

She wasn't limited to human strength though. Not now. Haruhi found the yellow cord again.

And then she chose to use it. And tried to ignore the sound of Antoinette laughing.


	6. Chapter 6

(This is a slow, dull chapter with much explication. 'Sorry bout that. But, you know, Haruhi needed a rest! Bisco Hatori owns the Third Music Room and its contents, not me.)

Drafty. Very drafty. Even draftier than before. Haruhi looked down. She wore a white fur bikini and a beaded armlet. Her knife had turned into a flint-headed spear, with bone carvings hanging from it.

"Behold the feral savagery of wild jungle princess Hunter Haruhi," Suou declaimed. "A throw-back to the ancestral Eve of hunter-kind!"

"In any place with white-furred animals, they're not wearing bikinis."

She cancelled the transformation. She didn't deliberately alter the bond to Suou, but he fell backward and turned grey anyhow. Perhaps it had become a conditioned reflex.

Ootori opened his notebook.

"Results?" he asked, writing them down.

The twins catapulted into an embrace that, almost incidently, had Haruhi between them.

"We're not going to kill her. She's too much fun!"

"Touching," Ootori said, as Haruhi dislodged a hand from where the bikini had been.

"She's our little pet!"

"We'll dress her . . . ."

". . . and fix her hair . . . ."

"My hair is fine the way it is."

". . . and play games with her . . . ."

Two faces looked up winningly into hers, one with a faint flickering madness in his eyes, and one with human cruelty. She blinked, and the mad eyes were sane again, and the sane eyes mad.

"I am going to regret this."

"Perhaps you won't have to," Ootori murmured. "Haninozuka-sempai?"

"Hi there, Haruhi-neechan! Please look kindly on me!"

He looked like a little boy. He felt like a little boy. His aura was unrelentingly innocent, without one trace of killing intent. Haruhi took a step back.

"Ah, just a minute! How about a little break?"

Ootori resettled his glasses.

"You scarcely need it."

The yellow cord gave her a steady warm seep of energy, like sunshine. The copper-orange one sent mild shocks every few minutes. If she tried to block them, they built up to stronger ones. She felt feverish, obsessed, restless to the point of mania.

She didn't need rest. She needed balance. Failing that, perhaps a fight would do. The fourth music room reshaped itself around her.

Haruhi lay under a willow tree on a warm summer afternoon. The sun was huge and molten in the distance. Every molehill cast a long, long shadow. Swallows called plaintively, flicking across the grass. A cicada rasped. She could barely keep her eyes open.

"Haruhi-chan, shall I read you a story?" asked a shadow with her mother's voice.

"Hai," she murmured.

"Sempai," she finished, several seconds later.

"Once in a time long ago, a small village in the forest was so poor that all it could sell was the strength of its people. They trained, and worked as guards and mercenaries and assassins, and even children learned how to kill."

She was quite helpless. Also, she was still alive. Haruhi let the two incompatible facts revolve as the storyteller droned on. A faint electric tingle made her shiver.

"A demon attacked the village. Strong fighters and sly assassins and wise elders died."

Her imagination gave her shattered buildings, friends dead, children crushed as they sobbed, blood in the gutters. She saw mindless rage, killing intent that would not end until not so much as a leaf still lived.

"The headman loved his village, and he bound the demon with his life. He bound it to a newborn, so it could not escape its host or survive without it. He bound it to his own son, and then he died."

A hunter's life was a price not worth calculating, if it stopped the slaughter. She looked down at blue eyes and laughter. The air around her was heavy and warm and perfumed, as if she sat in a jar of syrup.

"The son loved the village as his father had. He fought for it with a demon's strength. In time he became a headman too. When he was old and would die, he was sad because the demon had to die with him. He asked his own son to bear the demon, and his son agreed."

In the beginning it raged against the body that was its prison, trying its chains and tormenting its host. In the second lifetime it became ingratiating, hoping to argue or trick the host into freeing it. That won it a third lifetime, and the passage from host to host became a tradition. Stupidity, she thought, and felt her cheek twitch in a random tic.

"The village prospered, as well as a small village in a distant forest could. Other villages envied it. They tried to bind demons also. Mostly their names are forgotten, and grass grows over their roofs and their bones."

The memory of slaughter faded. Some hosts saw a tool, and others wanted a companion, and one or two had the gall to pity it. The demon remembered blood. It remembered the dead forgotten by their own people. The golden sun was in Haruhi's eyes. She raised a hand to shield them, and found she was holding her glasses.

"Some succeeded. They used demons to gain power, and power to gain wealth, and wealth to gain influence. No-one could challenge them but another line of demon hosts. Shall I list their names? Suou, Hitachiin, Haninozuki . . . ."

"Damned rich bastards," Haruhi murmured.

She felt too twitchy to stay lying down. She sat up and put her glasses on. The storyteller beside her was tall and pale, with furry white ears and white hair like a robe.

"They were enemies, all the families and all the demons. Alliances never lasted. The demons had flesh for their meat and blood for their mead, and their kinfolk praised them and looked away."

"Your feelings were hurt."

The flush felt like embarassment. She had woken far enough to recognize it as alien. Haruhi laid a metaphorical hand across gold and copper cords like koto strings. The storyteller was a stocky blond boy now; not quite as young as demon glamour made him, but young all the same.

"I don't want to be feared. I don't want to kill my friends. A demon who lives among humans becomes like them."

Ootori's spell on her glasses showed no alternative scene, only a flicker of shadows too dim to interpret. The boy told the truth. It wasn't the whole truth, of course. She'd probably understand the shadows far too late.

A mint green cord drew taut beside the others. She could cut it. She could cut them all. She might not survive, but she'd resigned herself to that.

The others would die too; the brave mad boy, the human twin (whichever one he was), the demon putting on humanity. She was not as eager to kill demons as she should have been.

Could a demon without empathy, build a trap made of it?

She opened her wards again. The thrill of power was effervescent, like melon soda. The afternoon landscape faded around her.

"A human who lives among demons becomes like them also," the demon said.


	7. Chapter 7

(Deep psychological character development ahead. In other words, some characters are remarkably out of character.)

Her dress was pale blue with a lace collar and puffy sleeves, short petticoats under a short skirt, and an even shorter white apron. Her shoes were shiny patent-leather Mary Janes. Her dagger had turned into a white-and-yellow lollipop about the size of her head.

"I want candy, Takashi. I want candy just like that!" Haninozuka wailed.

"Ooh, Mother! Isn't she the cutest little daughter?"

"Pervert!"

Suou landed against the wall. The Hitachiin twins gave each other a high five. Haruhi hastily reformed her clothes. As the lollipop disappeared, tears welled in Haninozuka's eyes.

Morinozuka silently drew a similar, smaller candy sucker out of his uniform pocket. Haninozuka jumped onto his shoulder, snatching the sucker on the way. He licked it with a beatific expression, and Haruhi felt a faint lime-green tingle.

"You too were defeated by the demon hunter?" Ootori asked.

His tone wasn't quite disbelieving, but it held more interest than his previous questions.

"I like Haruhi! I'll let her have a bite of my eclair, or cheesecake, or even one of my madeleines!"

"Thank you, but I don't care for sweets."

Haninozuka looked at her as if she'd failed a crucial test of character.

"Don't you know that commoners can't afford to eat anything but ramen?" Suou declaimed. "When they're hungry they watch cooking shows, to experience good food vicariously!"

"Oh? Well, we'll protect you instead. Won't we, Takashi?"

He launched himself from Morinozuka's shoulder to Haruhi's arms. She staggered. Morinozuka went to one knee before her. A dark blue cord laid itself beside the green, so close she would pluck both if she tried to pluck one.

"Yes."

She thought it ambiguous whether he bowed his head to her or to Haninozuka, but Ootori scribbled a result. The smallest host was heavy for his size. Haruhi tried not to show her relief when he dropped to the ground.

"No, I'll protect our cute daughter!" Suou said.

The twins made a rude noise.

"Takashi, I want another lollipop. Please? Pretty, pretty please?"

Ootori snapped the notebook shut.

"A hunter who defeated so many powerful demons? What protection does she need? She'll have no difficulty whatsoever with one . . . last . . . inconsiderable . . . opponent."

At each word the room grew darker. She heard shouts, "My daughter! Our toy! Haruhi-chan!"

She found herself . . . nowhere.

No ground under her feet. No sky over her head. No light. No sound. Nothing to touch as she groped in the dark. She drew her feet up, and hugged her shoulders.

"Papa," she whispered, and, "Mama?"

After a while – time in the music room was strange to begin with, and here there seemed no time at all – she raised her head and brought her hands together in front of her chest. Light shone between them when she drew them apart.

"Haruhi," she whispered, staring into it. "Haruhi. I am Haruhi."

Four cords spiraled out of the light, whirling as gently as a pinwheel. They were balanced now, the twins' chaos and Morinozuka's purpose, Haninozuka's patience and Suou's dreams. She could probably find her way back by drawing on them. She chose not to.

Something cold and slick licked her ankle, and then the back of her neck.

"Little demon hunter, you've come to the wrong place, and found the wrong demon. Are you ready to fight? Will you fight for your little demon hunter life?"

The cold touch on her nape had been seriously unpleasant. Haruhi brought up a glimmering ward. She thought she saw a deeper shadow in the dark, and two pale discs.

"I don't want to fight you. I want answers."

"You don't want my answers. I tell you, you will die. Everyone you love, everyone you know, they will die. All you look on will be destroyed, and the stars won't even shiver in their courses."

"I'm alive. My friends . . . ." (She didn't look at the spinning wheel.) ". . . are alive. Does a painting disappear when you turn your back to it?"

The dark was silent too long. Something had diverted Ootori's reply. Haruhi even wondered if she'd surprised him somehow.

She landed heavily on a concrete floor, skinning one palm and bruising her hip. In place of infinite darkness around her she saw a concrete ceiling and a concrete floor, and four walls. The random doorways and windows (she stood on one doorway, hinged in the floor) were boarded up from the inside.

The walls had been white once, but every surface was so scribbled over it was almost black. A boy crouched in one corner, drawing with the bloody ends of his fingers.

"Stop that. You'll hurt yourself."

"I can't be hurt here. That's why I came. That, and love."

He turned around. Haruhi was unsurprised to see a younger Ootori.

"Sit still. He'll take you away soon. I need to finish my sketch first."

The room was still and close and stank of blood. Her eyes began to disentangle the overlapping images. They went in series; a crude sketch (barely more than a kindergartner's drawing) that was gradually elaborated into something exact and detailed. Haruhi recognized a face near her.

"That's Suou."

"Isn't he beautiful? He's my imaginary friend."

When he turned to look at her she saw her own face begun in shades of crimson. He was doing the detailed portrait, without preliminaries.

"Why did you block the windows?"

"I only need art, and a room of my own. I loved my father, but I couldn't be what he wanted. The demon could."

"He's trying to be human. He's not very good at it, but he's trying."

Haruhi felt sick. She found a window less securely nailed than the rest, and dragged at the boards.

"Stop that. He'll get in. They'll get in!"

He grabbed Haruhi with bloody hands. He tried to pull her away from the window, but instead he added his weight to hers. Nails rasped loose and the boards dropped.

Light poured in. It glinted on dust in the air like a fall of snow, and on a scatter of unused oil paints on the floor. It picked out gouges in the wall, the face of an older man carved under all the other drawings.

Haruhi realized she'd gotten the order wrong. Each series started with the full image, which was copied and simplified until no distinctions were left.

Tentacles writhed through the window and yanked her away.

(Mori fans will note that he doesn't get a bout with Haruhi, or much screen time at all. Unfortunately he's the only demon so far who's sure to have won against her, and that would have changed the story beyond recognition. Sorry, sorry!)


	8. Chapter 8

(Not only did Mori fail to get a chapter, Ootori gets two. My sins only multiply.)

Haruhi could even reach her sheathed knife. The tentacles wrapped her too closely. They were moist and cold and terrifying. A voice without a mouth spoke to her.

"I didn't expect you to do that."

"You planned everything else, though."

Stars shone in the sky, and waves sounded on a distant beach. She and the demon swayed in small unpredictable arcs. Haruhi felt sick again.

"Did you think I wouldn't notice? You knew who I was when you had Suou summon me. You knew his demon would bargain with me. You knew I couldn't kill both twins. Did you tell Haninozuka what to do?"

"That one is too powerful for me to command. But not . . . unpredictable."

"What do you gain?"

"Give them to me. You don't want them. With four demons at my hand, Ootori can crush the other houses."

He showed her mansions, each more ridiculously lush than the last. The servants ran. Women in jewels and men in designer suits were struck down. A few of the young lived a while longer, for their use as bribes or sacrifices.

In a doorway the human twin tried to bar the other, but he was pushed aside. An old woman shrieked curses as Antoinette tore her apart. Haninozuka wept as he beat down a younger boy, until Morinozuka stepped in for the kill.

Ootori bowed his head to an older man with familiar features, and had his respect.

"I can't do that."

"You can't stop me."

Tentacles closed on her chest and throat, so her mouth gaped without hope of screams. More of them encased her. The sound of the sea and the touch of the wind were walled away.

For what seemed the twentieth time that day Haruhi called up her wards. She did not let herself think that this time her strength would be gone. She let the limits of her soul press outward.

Light burst like spears between the tentacles. The black sea reflected a starflare. The demon fell. White splashes settled to circles of foam. Haruhi, who couldn't float in mid-air like a demon, found herself standing on a convenient mid-ocean rock.

"It appears that I'm beaten," Ootori said.

She saw by inner light a purple cord so dark it was almost black. Having chosen to trust demons, against all precedent and reason, she didn't try to block it. The result wasn't really a surprise.

The cord split into four and wound like a pea-vine about the other cords. Four tentacles shot from under the water to spear her.

Nothing had ever hurt so much. Blood soaked her sweater and dripped in trails off her hands. Like teeth come loose and rocking in the gums, she felt gold, copper, green and blue unseated.

"No. Mine!"

She saw her reflection in a patch of still black water, before falling blood shivered it. Her canines had grown. Her eyes burned gold. She kicked her feet and brought her hands up to the spines that impaled her. Weakly she tried to push her body off them.

At the same time, in a place where neither sight nor hands had much meaning, she plaited one cord and another. They split and melded as she worked. Sometimes the count was five cords and sometimes eleven, and sometimes any number between. She wound them with a red cord, and tied off the braid with it.

Rainbow colors shifted in patches across the plait. Orange, yellow, green, blue . . . and purple. Even after the red cord wore away, the others would stay bound for a while. For many human lifetimes.

She could only hope that allying their powers didn't make a worse burden for human beings. Would they, as the demonic families did, keep each other in check? She didn't trouble herself with it. Groaning with a voice too worn for screams, she jerked herself free of the last great spine and fell toward the sea.

Mori caught her. He balanced easily on the rocking deck as he laid her down. The boat was a gilt confection with a swan's head and silver wings. She knew who to blame for it. Her head lay in Suou's lap.

"Behold a barque of enchantment worthy of the princess Haruhi!"

"Couldn't you make something more stable? I think I'm going to be . . . ."

She put a hand over her mouth and tried to scramble for the railing. All she managed was to roll on her side. Suou didn't get out of the way in time.

A moment later she lay on a chintz-flowered settee. Afternoon sun streamed in through the sparkling windows, and glinted from china and glass on all the small tables. The room smelled of lemon, crocus, tea, and furniture polish.

She edged her head up, and saw her own sweater and pants and school slippers. She couldn't resent the absence of filth and blood and four great rips in the knitting.

An intact vase stood on its pedestal. The doorway to the hall was slightly open. They were released from the pocket-realm. She blinked, and managed to focus on Ootori.

"Shoulda . . . guessed. You had . . . another . . . way back. Damned rich bastards."

"In fact, you opened the way yourself."

She groaned.

"Did what you wanted."

Haninozuka sat by her head. He looked no taller, but oddly adult. Morinozuka stood behind him.

"Would you like some milk tea? I only put a little tiny bit of sugar in."

It tasted like syrup, but it was wet and hot. Haruhi swallowed obediently. Demonic energy held her together, a weave of gold and green with touches of copper. For months to come she wouldn't be able to survive without it.

Even so, a small steady flow of her own energy went outward. When she looked at Suou, she couldn't see a corpse. She fumbled her glasses out of their pocket.

Ootori took them from her hand. He closed his own hand around them, and they fell in shattered bits to the floor.

"You won't need those any longer."

Haruhi blinked. She had no difficulty focusing on his face, or on anyone's. It was a side effect of demonic healing, she supposed, and probably the only one she'd be grateful for.

"Was this your plan, or that . . . ?"

He smirked at her and stepped back into the shadows.

Haninozuka took a swallow from his own cup of tea. She felt the effervescence of a second-hand demonic sugar rush.

"As long as you live, the families can't use us against each other. They'll need other ways to compete."

That was politics. What did a hunter have to do with politics?

"Look at the clock!" Suou shrieked. "Our honored customers will arrive. Any. Minute!"

Ootori pointed his pen at the Hitachiins.

"Put her in the dressing room. Uniform, boy's, tailored. Hair, styled. Hands . . . do what you can."

"Fun! Fun with our new toy!"

Haruhi tried to hold onto the furniture, but her grip wasn't at its strongest, and the twins were insidious.

"Wait a minute. Why do I need a boy's uniform? I can't afford a uniform."

"You're joining the Host Club. You have to be a boy for that. We'll add it to your bill."

Suou clutched the sides of his head.

"No! Only the finest frocks for our sweet daughter!"

"Do you want it known that an obscure commoner has subverted five demons from the top houses? The tabloids would be interested."

"Here, Haruhi-neechan. Have some cake!"

Scrambling back from three layers filled with pudding and topped with jam, meringue and whipped cream, Haruhi fell over a foot stool. Morinozuka caught her and set her on her feet. Before she could gather her thoughts she was caught up by the twins like a millrace.

"What did you say? What bill?"

(Outtake:

"Look, everyone! Kung-fu martial artist Haruhi!"

The costume had arm bracers, a noticeably under-filled bodice that laced in front, a skirt slit up to her thighs, and high heels. Haruhi snorted.

"Somewhere some idiot practices martial arts in high heels. And he probably goes to this school."

Mori blushed.)


	9. Chapter 9

**The Hunter and the Ouran Hosts: Epilogue****, by DarkBeta**

The uniform fit as if it had been sewn for her. The Hitachiin twins spent some minutes checking that the seams lay flat, until Haruhi realized where their hands were going. A burst of power tossed them out of the dressing room.

A Hunter fought alone. Any Hunter knew how easily friends or kin could be possessed, made into an attack that destroyed the target even when it failed. Fujioka Haruhi hadn't been a Hunter when she married, but she'd known of the remote chance she could be called. She must have considered the protection Ranka's shrine service gave him.

Haruhi hadn't hoped for as much. Skill mattered. Strength. Excellence. Not friends. If her life was a single brief comet, she'd make it a bright one.

She wasn't alone now. A rainbow gleamed just out of sight. There were voices in a conversation not quite overheard, a confusion of perfumes in an empty room. She'd never be alone, until she died or released them.

Her mind had always been an ordered library. Now it was a library with a mirrored disco ball, scattering sparks of rage, greed, gluttony, pride and desire across the stacked scrolls. Nothing was changed, nothing was harmed, but they were damned distracting!

Still, she'd wanted to know more about demons. As a research opportunity, to have five hosts at close range was unparalleled. Perilous, but unparalleled.

Hot water steamed, by the time she got back to the main room. Platters of thin sandwiches sat on the sideboard between arrays of pastry and pedestaled cakes. She hoped her stomach wouldn't rumble.

"My sweet daughter can stand here beside me. A simple setting is best for a gem of perfection!"

Tamaki smiled sweetly at their reflection on the side of the giant vase. Haruhi recognized it with a start. She put her hands behind her back, feeling the comfortable press of the sheath under her boy's jacket.

"I can't let you feed off the other students!"

Huni blinked at her with swimming eyes.

"But Haruhi, do you want us to starve?"

"Will you feed us yourself?" Ootori murmured. "A brief meal . . . but memorable."

She saw a shadow vaster than whales, lurking just under the sea's surface.

"We don't hurt them," Kaoru protested, and Hikaru grinned.

"Just tease them a little."

"Our sweet daughter would never wish to keep her fellow students from the fleeting moments when they lay down their burdens! Do not deny these damozels the companions they seek so devotedly!"

Tamaki brushed his hair back in a careless gesture, and checked the side of the vase to make sure the disarrangement flattered him. Haruhi heard Antoinette along a golden cord.

"Every mortal has a part of their life they're happy to surrender."

"Watch," Ootori said, a firm hand on her shoulder sandwiching her between him and Tamaki.

Without human hand – and why had none of the students ever noticed that? – the great doors creaked open.

At least the girls at her table were safe. Haruhi snatched glances at the other tables when she could. No-one was withering away, nor even falling into a faint. Looking harder she saw sparks drift from the visitiors to their hosts. From some of the visitors, that was, and only a few glints from each.

The hot-eyed girls at Tamaki's table seeped gold sparks, and lost their high color. Copper glints snapped to one or the other of the twins, and around their table shrill angry voices calmed. Green wisped from a child in an over-tight uniform, as she slid a second slice of cake from her plate to Huni's.

Lust faded to admiration, rage to humor, gluttony to satisfaction. Even Ootori had a few guests. Lavender notes drifted to him, and in the girls something driven and claw-handed relaxed.

The ordinary students had always seemed to live such confused lives. Haruhi was bound to their defense, but that hadn't kept her from wondering how they could care so much for things that didn't matter. The borrowed energies were changing her sight. She saw their stresses in living color, and could only wonder why they didn't shatter.

A Hunter should have struck at the first hint of harm to a human. Haruhi touched the braided cords and found them calm. A few girls went chattering from the room as more arrived. The ones walking away seemed more freed than diminished. She shook her head, trying to shake old certainies back in place.

"What is it, Haruhi? Do you have a headache?"

She did, actually, but she smiled ruefully at the girls.

"Ah, I just realized that I'd let your cups get empty. Would anyone like more tea?"

When she went to the sideboard, Ootori happened to walk behind her.

"Doubtless you are content now. They lose nothing but what they're eager to shed."

"Then maybe you make it too easy for them. Will they be able to manage their desires, without the Host Club for a crutch?"

Ootori sniffed.

"Teenage girls. The hours here are a small island. They'll still need to learn to swim in the flood. Why do you look so hard for flaws?"

The sight of oozing eclairs, the smell of salmon and pate, were sick-making. Haruhi swallowed against it and stared out at the green gardens.

"Demon energies are keeping me alive. Right now . . . I feed on them too."

At the back of her thoughts, Antoinette chuckled. Ootori's comment had no sympathy, only a mild satisfaction.

"They are short cords that bind us."

It must have been Antoinette's influence. Haruhi had a brief mental image of walking along with with six demonically beautiful high-school men on leashes. Most of them wore less than was proper, and several featured black leather pants.

Her mind instantly stuffed them all back in school uniforms, with Tamaki glomping her, the twins chasing each other around her legs, Huni straining toward an ice cream stand, and a passing German shepherd leaping like a puppy into its master's arms as Mori looked at it.

Kyoya had a leash, but he held it, and the collar was on Haruhi. She blinked, and shuddered.

"Damned rich bastards."


End file.
